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Bill Gates: iPad will struggle without pen and keyboard

updated 09:00 pm EST, Wed February 10, 2010

by MacNN Staff

Bill Gates wants iPad more like Tablet PC

The iPad needs to be more like the Tablet PC to be successful, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argues in an interview today. He admits that he sees the Apple device as a "nice reader" but says he's not envious of the design as it doesn't have the hardware he feels would be needed to reach critical mass. While the iPhone was clearly an improvement versus Windows Mobile, the iPad isn't enough like a conventional portable to break through, Gates says.

"I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard -- in other words a netbook -- will be the mainstream on that," he tells BNET. "So, it's not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, 'Oh my God, Microsoft didn't aim high enough.'"

Gates has long been a champion of the Tablet PC format since it was unveiled in 2001 but makes the observations despite seeing relatively little success. In the nine years since the designs first appeared, no models have had significant traction among the general public and have largely relegated the designs to niche markets like doctors and warehouse work. Netbooks have also come in tablet form but are still dominated by traditional designs that often cost less and carry a smaller profile.

When introducing the iPad, Apple's Steve Jobs specifically attacked netbooks as being too slow and running poor software. He also noted that the iPad can often weigh half as much as a netbook and should be much easier to hand-hold. A lighter tablet netbook like ASUS' 9-inch Eee PC T91MT weighs 2.1 pounds, gets half the battery life, and is twice as thick as the iPad despite the smaller screen.

Coming from a true innovator. why don't these bozos from Microsoft just shut their mouths and stop making asses out of themselves. Did they learn nothing with the iPhone? Don't worry mr. gates, the consumers will do the talking. When the numbers come in and the consumers have proven that apples new device owns the market, watch your beloved microsoft try to catch up by creating a half assed copy of apple's product and pump billions into it trying to get people to buy it.

I would expect Monkey boy to make a comment like that BUT I had more respect for Bill Gates .. Saying "The iPad needs to be more like the Tablet PC to be successful, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argues" shows they have not a clue.

I would expect Monkey boy to make a comment like that BUT I had more respect for Bill Gates .. Saying "The iPad needs to be more like the Tablet PC to be successful, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argues" shows they have not a clue.

1. Bill has created the most used OS in the world.
2. Bill is a true innovator who has never copied anyone at anytime
3. Bill created Microsoft which as created the worlds best tablet that is currently on sale
4. Bil creates software and hardware that is stable user friendly secure and cheap
5. Bill knows what he is talking about
6. Bill is the last word on technology
7. Bill cares about technology and will support the best software even if someone other Microsoft produces it
8. Bill always tells us the truth
9. Bill will give us all $1M from his fortune
10. Bill is a nice guy.

Now #1 and #10 are true. The rest well I will let you figure it all out.

but I have to agree wit him about the pen. I think a stylus would allow the iPad to replace paper in a way that typing just can't. The ease with which people can grab a pen and a scrap of paper to jot down something anywhere, anytime hasn't been matched. The next time you use a pen or pencil, think about what you'd use if you had your iPad and a stylus.

beloved physical keyboards. I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but smartphones are losing their physical keyboards at a relatively quick rate. All the latest Android phones do not have physical keyboards. Nor do the Nokia top-of-the-line handsets. Only RIM seems to have a line-up with plenty of keyboard-type smartphones. Anyway, iPhone sales do not seem to be struggling without a keyboard or stylus.

There is absolutely no reason to need a physical keyboard built into what is basically a playback device. A well-designed interface will provide at least 95% of what you can do with a stylus. I'm assuming that the stylus is being used for some sort of handwriting recognition system which maybe the iPad doesn't support out of the box.

Apple is building the iPad mainly for the consumer, not some niche product for warehouses and UPS/FedEx deliverymen. The iPad is going to be about readily available content delivery and a simplified user interface. That's what will drive iPad sales along with Apple's secret weapon retail chain and customer support. Bill Gates just doesn't get it. He's hung up on the Microsoft corporate way of doing things.

If he thinks that some device like the T91MT represents the ultimate consumer tablet, then he is clearly deluded. Only Rube Goldberg would be proud of that creation.

Bitching about the virtual keyboard is so 2007, as in right after the launch of the first iPhone.

I know close to 70 people with an iPhone (I work in Mac-friendly IT), and everyone has trouble with the virtual keyboard the first couple of days, but then they get the hang of it. Ladies, sorry, you may have to chop your nails, but who really finds long fingernails attractive anyway?

And who's to say that there won't be a pen available for the iPad at some point? An external keyboard is also a possibility via the Dock connector; crazier things have been done with the Dock connector.

This guy said that the 00's would be the "Decade of the tablet." Then he helped launched a slew of POS PC's with pen input and full desktop OS's. They were awful to use (speaking as the former owner of a Toshiba) and flopped completely. Apple is making the right moves here by implementing finger-touch technology and using a touch optimized OS. I'm excited to see all the possibilities of the iPad once third-party developers release iPad specific apps.

Like us, Bill Gates has not seen an iPad, He really doesn't know what it's good or bad at. He's just spitballing out of thin air because someone asked him a question. I really can't wait until the iPad gets here and puts all this speculation to rest.

Odd that he would bring up the netbook... a market they almost completely lost to Linux because they were too busy developing an over-bloated operating system to push users into buying new hardware to make their OEM's happy. And then to make up for it, offer XP at an extreme discount to OEM's so that people could stay stuck in their Windows world while they were busy scrambling to get an improved OS out the door to run on these under-powered netbooks... only to later reverse course and set minimum hardware requirements that only the top end of the netbook market could match... and when Windows 7 was released, those top end netbooks just happened to be as powerful as the minimum laptop requirements for Vista two years earlier. So now Windows 7 (Vista 2.0) is selling like hot cakes compared to Vista, because it can now ride on the back of netbook sales.

In Bill Gates eyes, the future of computing is in whatever devices can run Windows.

Without parallel, PS/2, and serial ports, the Mac will continue to become marginalized (I am sure some idiots thought exactly that). Well, has it? Where are those ports on the PCs? Oh, now the truth comes out. They are finally following the footsteps created by the iMac more than a decade ago.

Interesting feedback from Bill. This is like listening to Steve Wozniak talking out of his a**. Nothing is making sense. Like someone mentioned here, they were put on the spot to answer the question, so they just blah blah blah. Table PC is a business niche. It exists only Home Depot & warehouse related places. I had seen doctor using HP iPaq (another niche) and wirelessly sending the prescription to nearby pharmacy store. iPad is not for everyone, just like Server is not for everyone.

Just because Bill Gates' Tablet sank in a deep hole doesn't mean that Apple has to follow.
Monkey Boy Ballmer will dig the M$ hole deeper and hopefully jump in and pull the dirt in over his selves...

As has been publicly mentioned Microsoft is not an innovation company. Look at the POS that Ballmer displayed for - what was it 30 seconds - at CES. Boy! Now that was innovation. And of course who could forget The Big a** Table! We received them here in Oz and the crowds waiting to plunk down the money were in the... uuh... none's (0)... Now, that's excitement!

1. Now all the iPad haters will finally STFU, because the one thing they hate more than the fact that the iPad can't be their plug-in girlfriend is the thought of ever agreeing with Bill Gates about anything.

2. We finally got Bill Gates himself to admit that Windows Mobile sucks.

3. His comments are all the proof required, should there be any need to wonder, that MS is in full panic mode furiously developing a knock-off that should be ready to have its a** kicked in about two years.

You have to admit that the MAN has some guts to comment on Apple's product. Last time a comment came from Microsoft was Ballmer's remark about the price of the iPhone. Now Bill is chiming in....
I guess Bill think that he can talk stuff because he has a half way decent product namely: Windows 7... thus entitles him "design street cred".
;~))

I'd quite like a pen for the iPad - it could be a great sketching tool - but I suspect that it gets away with having a lower resolution for finger based touch than would be required. Pen input would be a good adjunct to a handheld tablet.

But he's still getting it wrong if he's still focusing on hybrid devices (i.e. ones which can be used as laptops or touch screen). There's no way to build one that would have a usable keyboard AND be thin enough to use in one hand, which is where the form has failed.

You know, I just have to say something. The fanboyism here is frankly ridiculous. How old are most of you people commenting here? Do you have ANY concept that "opinion" does not equal "fact"? I peruse a lot of online forums, and the comments here at MacNN are of a quality which often makes me ashamed of being associated with Macs. Please, I beg of you, try to be less obviously biased.

Yes, Bill Gates is often wildly incorrect in his predictions of the future. Looking at Windows in comparison to the Mac OS certainly indicates to me that Microsoft also frequently doesn't "get it" when it comes to understand what consumers desire. But how can any of you possibly defend the lack of "out-of-the-box" pen input on the iPad? It just doesn't make any sense. I work with a large number of published-writers, poets, fine-artists of varying types, successful musicians, graphics designers, etc. The "buzz" I hear almost universally is "where is the pen?" All these people, many of whom are part of Apple's key demographic, won't consider an iPad without a pen. And yes, I've been asking because I wanted to know if other people felt the same way I do. In my opinion lack of pen input is a massive oversight. Will it still sell? Almost certainly, but can Apple afford to lose even 20% of their potential sales because their product lacks what is to many of us the "killer feature"? Were the iPad available today, with proper pen support (drawing, handwriting recognition), I would go to the store and buy one, right now. Even though it has limited memory, lacks a camera and has a glossy screen which I won't be able to see well outdoors, I would still buy one if it just had a pen and proper support. But because it lacks a pen, I probably won't buy one at all. At least not until I see how third-party developers add pen support, handwriting recognition, and then see how much those things cost and then see how well those items work when they have to be "tacked-on" instead of included with the product.

Please try to understand that just because *you* don't care about a particular feature doesn't make it a "fact" that that feature isn't important. It only means it doesn't matter to *you*.

(Clear example: After owning two cars with traction and stability control I'll probably NEVER buy another one with those features. Not only do I not require them, I actually hated them. On the other hand, I understand that this is my personal preference. I'm certainly not arrogant enough to go around insisting that because I don't like these things, that everyone else should feel the same way I do.)

This puts the icing on everything. From these comments, Bill is totally out of touch with reality. All Gates is is some myopic nerd who is resting on the laurels of DOS. Jobs is the true leader, visionary. After all this time, the tables are finally starting to turn. The fact it took this long is just a testament to how slow people are to change for something new and better.

Let's sum up the facts: Tablet PCs have FAILED. PDAs have FAILED. The Newton FAILED. Pretty much everything stylus has FAILED. This has been demonstrated for several years already. Stylus input doesn't work well enough. It's too unwieldly and limiting. Speech is limited to private environments. Both these input methods have limited utility. Multi-touch, as demonstrated by the iPhone, is beyond successful. It is the today and future of mobile computing. But Apple should have included stylus and speech functionality, along with a perhaps swivel type keyboard... making the iPad a convertible laptop like all those ones that completely failed already. What a completely ridiculous outlook Bill. Bill, it's over. You have completely lost touch. In fact, you never did have much of that.

Here is how absurd MicroSoft and Billy Boy really are. They release a massive table costing tens of thousands of dollars (MS Surface) while Apple released the same functionality in a phone. Now Apple is doing it with a tablet. But MS does not yet see the utility of Multi-touch in mobile devices. That should pretty much be confined to commercial products. I wish MS would just realize they are c*** as a consumer computer company and focus more on business. The iPad will be a success. MS, on the other hand, it's anybody's guess.

All Bill is saying is that the majority of the population doesn't have the money to spend on a device with such limited functionality. It's great for internet and reading, I'm sure. But without a keyboard or stylus, it's not great for word processing. Therefore, it's not going to become anybody's primary computer. It's that simple. It's an additional/secondary device. In other words, a large percentage of the population will not even consider it.

However, if it had some proper way of inputting text (ya virtual keyboard is great, but your kid isn't going to write a 1000 word essay on it, get real), then maybe it would replace netbooks for some people.

I love pens. Im a HUGE wacom fan, and hate using a mouse. At home I even use a Cintiq and I love it, but my biggest problem is - "WHERE DID THAT PEN GO?"

You don't want to have a device that needs another device to work properly (I have this same argument about DVD player needing a remote to navigate menus, but I'll save that for another rant)

And handwritting recognition has always been horrible - in any way that it was tried. I am glad they did not make any mention of "Ink pad" technology in this, because that is just setting up a user for frustration!

So as an avid iPhone fan and wacom enthusiast - I am so glad the iPad or iPhone does not require a stylus!!

So did Bill tell Ballmer that he thought the iPhone was way ahead of Windows Mobile at the time? Either he didn't, Ballmer simply didn't think Bill's opinion worth while or Stevie boy thought it better simply to lie in front of the cameras. Interesting to know the answer.

Thing is Billy devised the PC Tablet as is as his last throw at being considered remotely innovative he simply can't let go of the idea that it is a marketing disaster and the new kid on the block is going to set the standard from here on in and that his delusion that his baby will ever catch on in the form he devised will finally be extinguished and the future will look back on him very differently than he had planned.

You guys seriously bury a comment by a guy who agrees that a pen would be nice?

When the iPad falls flat the same crowd is going to say it is a niche market ala Macbook air. You guys are as objective as an Islamic fundamentalist from Saudi Arabia whose daughter just asked if she could date an Israeli Jew. (And about as filled with hatred as well!)

I've used devices with a pen and they ARE nice. Even the DSi has one and it is extremely popular. It is just easier to use and more functional than a fat finger. That's common sense.

A keyboard would slap this iPad as direct competition in the netbook arena also. It could easily pass up its competition too... a simple freaking keyboard.

But no! Never doubt Steve Jobs. He never had any mistakes or failures. The Apple Lisa, Apple III, Apple Newton, etc.

Stop drinking the kool aid and look at things objectively (Seriously? I doubt you can).

BTW, is the iPad compatible with the Apple puck mouse?

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